Minty Clinch, As the Lebanese ski mostly at weekends, the agenda makes a lot of sense. From Sunday to Thursday, visitors have the slopes to themselves. On Fridays and Saturdays, they can watch the locals flaunt their cutting-edge designer clothes on the slopes. Frequent direct flights from Abu Dhabi take just two-and-a-half hours, and Beirut’s city-centre airport makes for short transfers, so Lebanon is a highly practical alternative to a short break in the Alps.
Although it’s a tiny country, Lebanon punches way above its weight in many areas, not least the spectacular Roman ruins at Baalbek, the ancient port at Byblos and the impressive grottos at Jeita. Geographically, it has parallel mountain ranges with the fertile Bekaa Valley – home to what it claims are the world’s oldest vineyards – in between. The Cedars and Mzaar, the two resorts with international appeal, and half a dozen local hills are scattered along the western coastal range overlooking the Mediterranean.
The French introduced skiing in Cedars, in the north of the country towards the Syrian border, during the mandate years in the last century. From the mid-1920s, they rode up the mountain on donkeys, accompanied by villagers carrying their skis. During the Second World War, British soldiers on leave from North Africa headed to Beirut by train, rented leather boots and long hickory skis and hitch-hiked the 130 kilometres to Cedars to flounder up and down the hillside as best they could.
The base station is at 2,000m and the pioneering chairlifts which were installed in 1953 are still running today, backed up in 2005 by some triple chairs that only operate when there are enough customers to justify the expenditure on electricity. The iconic cedar trees, the emblem on the national flag, are conspicuously absent in the large bowl that makes up the ski zone. I’d imagined from old photographs that I’d be weaving my way among them in knee-deep powder. Wrong on both counts.
here is a small plantation of mini cedars at the bottom of the resort next to a longish street of stalls selling cedar memorabilia. The trees are supposedly protected, but their slow growth combined with an increasing commercial imperative don’t stack up too well for the future. In a bad snow year, with no skiing until the beginning of February and rapid melt down by the end of it, the powder was also conspicuously absent.
